Personal moral decisions change society for the better

We are living with an eerie air of failure about our nation today. What has happened to us? We don't really know.

Oh, our president-elect can save some jobs in Indiana by threatening the bosses of a Carrier plant. We can try to control Wall Street's ugly excesses - but we do so only after bad mortgages have left the poor stiffs taken by their banks out on the streets. We know that illegal immigration is a dire problem - yet why do we refuse to pass a realistic, humane, moderate policy that would be fair to everybody?

It suddenly comes to me that we're dealing only with results and not with basic problems. We are trying to "fix" things from the top down, instead of from the bottom up, which only confirms and strengthens the problems themselves.

It's much like a doctor having a patient with, say, a breast tumor. It's small and it's early, and it can be treated with needle surgery; but instead, the arrogant and willfully unknowing doctor prescribes antibiotics.

So start with health care. A good friend of mine had paid health insurance all her working life - 40 years. She never smoked or had unhealthy habits. But after a 13-hour cancer operation, her insurance company canceled her, using one of those phony excuses they're so good at. This is what's behind the present-day "existing conditions" discussion.

She was 65, so her please-don't-bother-me bosses naturally said blithely, "Put her on Medicare - everyone goes on Medicare at 65." But health care's dirty little secret is that being on Medicare can quickly send you to the poorhouse; it pays so little (and nothing at all for dental problems, which she had because of radiation).

And now the new administration is not only talking about destroying Obamacare, but also about defanging what Medicare pays, which would sink millions of people in desperation.

Hey, wait just a little minute, you guys! Pause a minute and think. The insurance companies are the problem here. Why aren't they paying? Why not reform them?

Or take the wars in the Middle East. Not one American in 100 would know why, but we're now fighting (and, mostly destroying and losing) in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Somalia, to start with. Why? Ask the neocons who wanted Iraq as a ballast for Israel, or George W.'s swaggering warmongers who wanted "their war."

If we go back to basic causes and principles, it all started when we armed the Afghan mujahedeen in 1979 against the Soviets in Afghanistan and then abandoned them; when we invaded Iraq on false pretenses in order to look powerful; and when we didn't recognize that our intentions are finite (we'll leave!) whereas the locals' intentions are infinite (they are there forever).

What to do? Start by seriously hammering out a genuine strategy for America in the world, a la Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski. Decide what is truly in our national interest and swiftly eliminate personal Napoleonic posturing on the part of our war lovers. For me, this would mean non-intervention in other nations' affairs except under the most profound of reasons.

It is actually easy for new countries with bad histories or no histories at all to build a new, modern country. With good leadership, they can adopt modern technology and teach their people the basics from the bottom up. I think of two successful examples: Singapore under Lee Kwan Yew and the Sultanate of Oman under Sultan Qaboos. In one lifetime, they soared.

But it is exceedingly difficult for a highly developed, industrialized and well-educated country, when its industries and its institutions have become worn and often outdated, and its people angry at their fall from grace, to modernize and to reform. All that baggage! Either move it aside or remodel it - but how?

That, to simplify greatly, is America's No. 1 problem today.

Yet, it can be done, not by fiddling endlessly over the details but by going back to bedrock principles, as painful as that can be. A moral insurance broker can insist on not canceling my friend's insurance because of "existing conditions." A banker or a Wall Street broker can return to original ethical standards. Our immigration officials can treat aliens with respect and yet also put American interests first. Out institutions can be reorganized and our strategic interests thought out anew - and written out for clarity.

We already have men and women who exemplify moral decision-making and are living examples: Warren Buffett, the extraordinary "Sage of Omaha"; Preet Bharara, the amazing U.S. attorney in New York; and Mitchell Daniels, the talented former governor of Indiana who is now president of Purdue, to name a few who deserve far greater attention than they are receiving as inspirations in today's world.

Change starts with a million personal moral decisions and then works its way upward into the systems and structures of society. Details burn themselves out as they fall into ashes by the wayside.

In the end, as we try to think things out this Christmas season, it will either happen this way - or it won't happen at all.

Email Georgie Anne Geyer at gigi_geyer@juno.com.

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